The Wicker movie is the strangest date night of the fall, and it opens in theaters on October 23. Olivia Colman plays a lonely fisherwoman who gets a husband woven out of wicker, Alexander Skarsgård plays the husband, and Black Bear is putting it on big screens this Friday. With searches for the film climbing tonight, here is what it is, who made it and how to see it.
A fable about a husband made to order
The official Wicker site calls it an audacious comedic fable about sex, marriage and the absurdities of social convention. Colman's fisherwoman lives on the edge of a village by the sea, where the locals have little time for her. She commissions a basketmaker, played by Peter Dinklage, to make her a husband, and he does exactly that. The wicker husband, played by Skarsgård, turns out to be close to perfect, and that is the problem. His arrival sets off outrage, jealousy and chaos across the village as everyone's hidden wants come to the surface. Elizabeth Debicki rounds out the main cast.
The story comes from The Wicker Husband, a short story by Ursula Wills, which the film's official credits name as its source. Expect a fairy tale for adults rather than a family film. The trailers lean into the comedy, the romance and the sheer oddness of watching Skarsgård act through a woven mask.
The duo behind it
Wicker is written and directed by Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, a husband and wife filmmaking team. They first came to the Sundance Film Festival in 2020 with an earlier feature. Wicker premiered as an official selection of the 2026 festival on January 24 in a sold-out Eccles Theatre, and the Sundance Institute says the film was shot on location in Budapest.
At that premiere, Wilson told the crowd, "We're just really excited to drop you into this strange world we made," and added, "just go with it." Skarsgård admitted the gentle, good-natured role scared him, since he is usually drawn to darker characters. Huston Fischer explained the casting simply: once Colman signed on, she became "a magnet that attracts the most talented people."
How to watch Wicker
Wicker opens in theaters on Friday, October 23, and Black Bear points ticket buyers to the official site for showtimes near them. Black Bear released the final trailer on its YouTube channel on October 20, after the first official trailer landed in July. Viewers in Canada can find dates and theaters on Elevation Pictures' Wicker site. There is no streaming date yet, so for now this is a theater-only release.
If you want a warm-up before Friday, the directors' 2020 feature is easy to stream:
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Our call
This one is Surfacing. A Sundance crowd-pleaser with Colman, Skarsgård, Dinklage and Debicki is a rare thing in a fall full of sequels, and the premise is weird enough that word of mouth will do the rest. See it opening weekend, in a full room, where the laughs land hardest.
More for film fans: the trailer for Kogonada's zi, our look at Rose with Sandra Hüller and the A24 horror starter guide.
Wicker at Black Bear · Official Wicker site · Black Bear
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